ACA critics: Homina, homina, homina

The law's opponents have lost the best evidence they had. | AP Photos, John Shinkle/POLITICO

“Today should remind us that the goal we set for ourselves — that no American should go without the health care that they need … the idea that everybody in this country can get decent health care, that goal is achievable,” Obama said. “We are on our way.”

But even liberal domestic policy experts were more cautious about how much the comeback really proves.

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“The ACA has dodged another bullet. But there’s still a lot we don’t know — about the age/health mix of enrollees and the number who were previously insured, among other things,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institution, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. “Most important, we don’t know whether large price increases are under way for October. This is the AFFORDABLE Care Act, after all.”

And the critics weren’t all ready to give the Obama administration gold stars. Lanhee Chen, Mitt Romney’s former policy director, said there are plenty of other areas in which the Obama administration’s competence can still be questioned — especially in not coming up with ways to track important information that shouldn’t be hard to track, like who was actually uninsured and who has paid their premiums.

“Why don’t we know more about who’s paid the first premium? Why are we having to read the tea leaves?” said Chen. “It speaks less to the ability of government to do big things and more to the competence with which this project was carried out.”

Still, Chen said it was time for Republicans to start thinking about whether there are parts of Obamacare that they can “keep in place and make better in terms of conservative health care reform” — like the health insurance exchanges and the future tax on generous health insurance plans, which he said could open the door to conservative goals like giving people their own tax break for health coverage.

“There are things in the law that create opportunities for conservatives, and they need to start embracing them,” said Chen.

That doesn’t seem to be the plan for most Republicans, though.

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio called again for the law’s repeal on Monday, the last day of enrollment, and Ryan’s budget is still built around the elimination of the law. He declared that “you’ll see lots of comprehensive alternative plans” from the GOP to replace the law, even though House Republicans haven’t been able to agree on one yet.

And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told reporters that former Sen. Scott Brown, the vocal Obamacare opponent who’s trying to return to the Senate and was at the weekly Republican lunch Tuesday, was “an appropriate candidate in a year in which Obamacare is likely to be the biggest issue in the fall” — as if the enrollment news had never happened.

To most Republicans, that’s the only way to move ahead — to keep talking about the law’s other problems and assure their supporters that they’ll never stop fighting the law.

“Despite the White House ‘victory lap,’ this law continues to harm the American people,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement after Obama’s speech. “Every promise the President made has been broken: health care costs are rising, not falling. Americans are losing the doctors and plans that they like — especially seniors suffering under President Obama’s Medicare cuts. Small businesses are afraid to hire new workers, hobbling our economic growth. That’s why we must replace this fundamentally-flawed law with patient-centered solutions that will actually lower health care costs and help create jobs.”

So far, though, they’re not saying what they’d do about the millions of Americans — whatever the actual number has turned out to be — who have already signed up for Obamacare coverage.

When asked by reporters, Sen. Ron Johnson didn’t answer directly, arguing that “it’s actually the Obama administration that keeps undermining the Affordable Care Act” through all of the delays it has granted on its own. And the Wisconsin Republican continued to talk about narrower, less disruptive alternatives as if the Obamacare train was still sitting in the station.

“Surely we can fashion a way to help the people who are falling through the cracks without doing all the damage that’s being done to others,” Johnson said.